The representation of a three-dimensional structure on a two-dimensional screen may typically involve a reduction in the quality of the information being presented. The reduction is typically significant in the case of anatomical structures, and a number of prior art references address this problem.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,643,662, to Gering, whose disclosure is incorporated herein by reference, describes a system for accessing a three dimensional representation of an anatomical surface and flattening the anatomical surface so as to produce a two dimensional representation of the anatomical surface.
U.S. Pat. No. 8,611,989, to Roberts, whose disclosure is incorporated herein by reference, describes a method of generating an image of a segment of a lumen structure. The method comprises acquiring volumetric image data and rendering a planar slab image based on a thickness and the volumetric image data.
U.S. Patent Application 2013/0088491, to Hobbs et al., whose disclosure is incorporated herein by reference, describes a two-dimensional (2D) animation that may be generated from a three-dimensional (3D) mesh by a machine or device that flattens, textures, and modifies the 3D mesh, which results in distorting the texture of the 3D mesh.
U.S. Patent Application 2011/0142306, to Nair, whose disclosure is incorporated herein by reference, describes providing a 3D dataset of a heart and generating a 2D representation of a curved surface of the 3D dataset by flattening out the curved surface of the heart.
Documents incorporated by reference in the present patent application are to be considered an integral part of the application except that, to the extent that any terms are defined in these incorporated documents in a manner that conflicts with definitions made explicitly or implicitly in the present specification, only the definitions in the present specification should be considered.